As data storage on distributed systems becomes increasingly popular due to their inherent scalability, performance, security and other advantages, customers are relying more on such systems to store sensitive and/or important data. However, the operation of such systems often involve the creation and persistence of multiple copies of data across the distributed systems, and the verifiable deletion of all such data copies can be difficult or complex to manage. This can be problematic when customers rely on distributed systems to persist, then securely remove access to, crucial or sensitive data in order to, for example, prevent corporate espionage or identity theft. There is thus a need for a scalable, easily implementable method to securely, permanently and/or verifiably remove such data from distributed systems that may contain multiple copies of the data across a large number of redundant storage nodes.